


but these small hours

by brahe



Category: Jurassic Park (1993), Jurassic Park Original Trilogy (Movies)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hospitals, Introspection, Maybe - Freeform, Post-Canon, Recovery, Soft™, alan deals with feeling like a dad, also rip ian he's here i promise just not...in this oops, also tim doesn't have any dialogue either double oops, and finding out he can feel new feelings, ellie loves and supports him, except alan thinking abt kids and coping, honestly idk what this is, it's big soft what a surprise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:48:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25500883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brahe/pseuds/brahe
Summary: "I see you've grown a few extra limbs," she says, and Alan looks down to Tim, then Lex, and back to Ellie."So it seems," he says with a soft smile.There's a hundred things he wants to say, about the kids, about the park, about her and them and everything else in between, but he finds no words strong enough to carry the sentiments.Instead, he slides his foot across the gap until his thigh is pressed to Ellie's. She pushes against him for a moment, a solid, sure presence, and they watch each other, basking in the simple, overwhelming joy of being alive, of being together.
Relationships: Alan Grant & Lex Murphy, Alan Grant/Ellie Sattler
Comments: 9
Kudos: 21





	but these small hours

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hotwheels_kin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotwheels_kin/gifts).



> this went,,,, so many places it wasn't supposed to go. my original concept is somewhere in the wind, but there's a little sprinkle of what was going to be a 5+1 of alan dealing with kids
> 
> instead, this is some weird soft emotional thing i wrote in the hours between midnight and 3am where alan thinks abt a lot of things, but mostly his feelings
> 
> for hals – i hope this still fits into the jurassic park fam spot even tho half of them are missing lmao oops. there was going to be meeting the family/good with kids but then it turned into whatever this is. it's kind of a mess, but it's also the first thing ive done since quarantine. thanks for inspiring me to write again!!  
> this is also sort of something ive wanted to write for a long time. a good bit of part one was reworked from a draft from 2012 so thanks for the opportunity to finally get this out of my head!!
> 
> title from little wonders by rob thomas

_i don't mind if it's me you need to turn to, we'll get by_

_we will only just remember how it feels_

_o n e_ –

  
  


Lex is shaking so hard he's half afraid her bones are going to rattle right out of her skin. He's never seen fear like this – hell, he's never _felt_ fear like this – and he's still trying to refind his own feet. He hardly feels equipped for children on a _good_ day. 

Lex's eyes are wide and unfocused, searching for something she won't find in the blur of the dark. She jumps at every frog and cricket, every shift of the forest around them.

"He left us," she says, mutters in her exhales, strained with the way she's choking on air. "Daddy, where – he – he left us–" 

"Lex," Alan says, and her gaze finds him, though it's far away. "Lex, it's me, it's Alan." He reaches for her, a tentative hand on her shoulder, at a loss on how to bring her back, how to calm her down. He's hyper-aware of every flash of lightning, every distant rumble, every creak from the car in the tree beside them. Every too-quick breath Lex takes seems to echo around them, and there's an itch under Alan's skin that's telling him they need to _move, move now, move, move, move._

"Lex," he tries again, "Lex, listen, you gotta be quiet, otherwise she'll hear us and come back." 

_Stupid,_ **_stupid_ **, he thinks, immediate and strong, when Lex cries louder. "Oh, Lex," he says, mostly to himself, and sighs, frustrated with himself more than anything, for his inability to comfort her, calm her the way he finds himself wishing he could. 

He tries to hush her as he looks around for somewhere for them to hide, somewhere less exposed. He knows how to do _that,_ at least. 

There's a culvert in the bottom of the enclosure wall that looks like it'll do the trick. 

He takes a step away from Lex, letting his hand fall from her shoulder, and suddenly she's reaching for him, shaking her head so much he doubts she can see anything. 

"He left us," she repeats, breathing so fast there's no way she's retaining much oxygen. "He left us, he left us. I'm scared, I'm _scared_ , daddy, _please_ –" 

She chokes on a sob, hand coming to her mouth, curling her shoulders in. The sound creates a physical hurt behind Alan's ribs, and before he's aware of it, he's wrapping his arms around her, pulling her to his chest.

She's shaking like a leaf but she clings to him, face pressed into his stomach, and he holds her tightly to himself, protecting, grounding, soothing.

"Shh," he says, running the palm of one hand over her head, again and again, "sh, it's okay, I'm right here," he tells her, "I'm gonna look after you, I promise." 

He can feel her nodding against him, her shaking subsiding. He finds it hard to let her go, but he needs to clean the mud and blood off both of them, assess their injuries, find Tim. 

He shifts to holding her shoulders and pushes her away from him enough to bend down and meet her gaze. 

"Daddy, he – he left," she says, again, hands scrambling to grasp at his arms, white-knuckle. "He left us!" 

Alan holds the sides of her face carefully, but firmly enough to hold her attention. She looks at him, eyes wide, but focused this time, _finally_ , calming down. Sudden, brief relief floods Alan's veins, and he wonders how he came to care so deeply for her so quickly. 

"That's not what _I'm_ gonna do." 

_t w o_ –

  
  


Something deeper and stronger than relief hits him like a trunk when the helicopter is over the sea, finally away from that wretched place, rotors steady like a heartbeat behind the engine noise. Everything is muffled here, but it's the soundproofing of the cabin and not the fear-cotton in his ears that's keeping the sounds at bay now. 

He sags into his seat, the last of his tension draining into the leather, and leans his head back, eyes closing. It feels like it's been a year since he's slept, since they landed here, but it's hardly been forty-eight hours. Less than two days, and he'll never be the same again. None of them will. 

He tightens his arms where they rest around Lex and Tim, both already fast asleep, no doubt exhausted. He suspects Lex might be faking, still too uneasy to let her guard down, but he holds her closer just the same. They're as much a comfort to him as he is to them. 

And isn't that something. 

He looks across the cabin, to where Hammond sits beside Malcolm, who's loosely falling in and out of awareness, his leg stretched across to the empty seat on Alan's side. 

Ellie sits directly across, watching him. She's weary, exhaustion clear in the slope of her shoulders and the way she's sunk into the seat. There's a ghost of horror lingering in her eyes, but when she catches his gaze, she gives him a small, brief smile, and he falls in love with her all over again. 

He aches to hold her, fingers itching for her, to tuck her head into his neck and untangle her hair, to listen to what she saw and ease her pain – but she knows. She always knows.

"I see you've grown a few extra limbs," she says, and Alan looks down to Tim, then Lex, and back to Ellie.

"So it seems," he says with a soft smile. There's a hundred things he wants to say, about the kids, about the park, about her and them and everything else in between, but he finds no words strong enough to carry the sentiments.

Instead, he slides his foot across the gap until his thigh is pressed to Ellie's. She pushes against him for a moment, a solid, sure presence, and they watch each other, basking in the simple, overwhelming joy of being alive, of being together. Ellie's eyes grow watery, and Alan's half a second from letting go of the kids to comfort her, but she shakes her head.

"No," she says, "no, I'm okay. _Christ_ , I'm just glad you're – glad you're okay." 

Alan bumps his knee against hers. _I'm better than okay_ , he thinks, and for all that it isn't true, it _is_ , in a way that feels like two heavy, warm pressures on his sides. _He_ did that – _he_ kept them safe and together and alive. 

There's a foreign feeling curling up in his chest, and he hardly feels like he has room to feel any more at all, but then it settles, simple and soft and quiet, like it was always there, always _supposed_ to be there, and he sighs, feeling a kind of peace he's never quite found before, despite it all. 

"Love you," he says, instead, so quiet he wonders if she heard him. But she's watching him, and she catches it just the same, anyway.

_t h r e e_ –

  
  


They're the only ones in this wing of the hospital. Hammond's doing, no doubt, but for once Alan appreciates the special treatment. It's quiet and unhurried, two things Alan's thankful for now more than usual. He hadn't realized how tightly tensed he was until he allowed himself to relax. He lets his body sink further into his commandeered hospital bed with a heavy sigh. 

He was the first cleared by the doctors – aside from Hammond – and he came away with only some ice and a few bandages. It seems too little for all the things he'd survived there, and the thought makes him sick. There's plenty enough injury across the rest of them. 

Lex was second – she had a deep gash on her back from the broken glass of the overturned Jeep that needed a couple stitches, but otherwise she fared similar enough to Alan. She had come to find him as soon as she was allowed to, threw her thin arms around his waist and didn't let go. 

_Still hasn't,_ Alan thinks, looking down at his left side with a faint smile. Lex fell asleep a few hours ago, her arm across Alan's stomach and her head pillowed below his ribs. For a moment, he allows himself the flood of pride. _He_ kept her safe, kept her unharmed, and now, he protects her from her terrors. 

"What are you thinking about?" 

He turns to his right and finds Ellie watching him, shadowed in the darkness of the room. She reaches for his face, brushes away his hair with the tips of her fingers and traces the lines between his brows. 

Alan tightens his arm around her, holds her closer. She's already laying half on top of him, the weight of her body a comforting, grounding pressure, keeping him from drifting off with his thoughts.

"Nothing," he says, matching her soft tone. And then, "Lex." 

Ellie looks across Alan's body to Lex with a gentle smile. Their hands are threaded together over Alan's chest, Lex's hand still tight in Ellie's. 

"I'm proud of you," Ellie tells him. "She'll be okay." 

Alan lets his eyes linger on their hands, lets his mind dwell on the warm weight of their bodies, the thumps of their heartbeats and the patterns of their breathing, lets himself exist in this moment and only in this moment. Nothing is more grounding, more soothing, than his girls safe and sound in his arms. 

"Yeah," he agrees. "Yeah."

He looks back at Ellie, the cast on her ankle catching his attention from the corner of his eye. "How about you?" he asks. "How are you feeling?" 

Ellie hums. "I'm okay," she says, "surprisingly enough. It sort of doesn't feel real," she admits. "Feels like – did any of that actually happen? It seems like a dream, almost, but then – but then Tim, and Ian, and all those people, and I –" She cuts herself off to take a breath, and Alan rubs his hand over her back. "It's selfish, but I'm glad you're okay." 

"I'm okay," Alan says without real thought, a reassurance past his lips before he's fully aware of it. He thinks about selfishness now, applied to them and where they are and what's happened, since that's easier than thinking about being okay. If there ever were a time to be selfish, it would be now, would've been the weekend – but how can it be selfishness when it is so clearly love? It is love that drives a want to protect one over others, for the heart will fight for itself until it stops beating. 

They've lapsed into silence by the time Alan says, "I don't think it's selfish." 

Ellie shifts, picking her head up from Alan's heart to peer at him in the dimness of sometime after midnight. 

"It's not selfish," Alan repeats. Ellie smiles at him, a soft thing that's a little sad at the edges, and he thinks about how he'd never seen it before yesterday, about how he's likely to see it a while yet. 

He watches his fingers as he reaches for Ellie's face, traces the outside edge around her eye, across her cheekbone, before disappearing into her hair. He holds the back of her head when she settles back down, perfectly folded into his side. He tightens his arm around Lex, presses his lips to Ellie's forehead, lets the sounds of their breathing overwhelm him, and thinks, _it's not selfish._

_f o u r_ –

  
  


His feet are on the floor before he consciously realizes he's awake, and he's on the way to the door as he remembers where he – they are. Fourteen steps in a blink and a half, and he's standing in their doorway, breathing like he's run a marathon. 

He's become rather well acquainted with the way fear makes his lungs work harder than they ever have, lately. 

It's sometime between the small hours and the first rays of the sun, the room lit with faint, creeping tendrils of the cool pre-dawn. The room is still – Tim's in the same deep, medication-assisted sleep as he was when Alan left for bed, and Lex is still wrapped around him, asleep now. He watches them breathe, listens to Tim's quiet heartbeat as his own slows back down. 

Three times now he's found himself here, in this situation, in the three days it's been since they arrived – one for every time he's tried to sleep alone. He wakes up in a panic over Tim, Lex, both of them, spurred on by dreams he doesn't always remember, and he only calms down again when he sees them, confirms to his fearful, wandering mind that they're safe, he kept them safe, they made it out. 

His feet carry him softly into the room, to one of the chairs pulled up by Tim's bedside, and folds himself into the cushions once more. He's spent rather a lot of time like this, sagged into this chair, keeping Tim company, keeping Lex out of her head. 

It's easy to sit here, to keep his quiet protection. There's a gentle feeling in his chest, something softer than pride, every time he watches them, every time they show him their trust. He's earned it, sure, but it doesn't mean anything less for it. He has earned for himself the way they look to him for guidance, for comfort, and he lets himself soak in this softer-than-pride feeling, only sometimes thinking about what it means. 

A hand on his shoulder startles him, muscles jumping, and he looks up to find Ellie standing beside him, that soft-sad smile curving her lips once again. 

"Figured I'd find you here," she says, because she knew she would. Alan shrugs. 

"Couldn't sleep," he tells her. She nods, squeezing his shoulder. 

He turns his attention back to the kids. Lex is shifting around the way she tends to do as she's waking up slow. 

"Ellie," he calls, just a little more than a murmur. She hums. "Ellie, I don't – I never thought I –" 

Ellie squeezes his shoulder again. "I did," she says, like a simple truth, because it is. "I always did."

Alan looks up at her again. "How?" 

She sighs, fond, and drapes her arms down Alan's shoulders. "I know you," she tells him. "I knew you had it in you." 

It's not the right time to talk about kids, not really – not so soon after everything that's happened, not while this softer-than-pride feeling in Alan's chest is still so new and fragile, not until they know what happens to them, all of them, next – and so she doesn't say how she knew, but she did. It's always been there, in the way he loves things, with everything he has and a little more, lets them consume all his attention and affection. 

Alan turns his head to press a kiss to her arm, shifting a hand to grab onto hers. 

"I don't know what to do," he admits. "What happens after this? I don't want to…I have to look out for them." 

Ellie hums. "You don't have to know," she says. "The world won't fall apart just because you don't know the answer to everything all the time." 

Alan huffs, amused, and Ellie smiles.

Lex is blearily awake now, crawling her way to consciousness, and Tim's not far behind her, his breathing shifting to a shallower, more irregular pattern. 

"Just be here for them now," Ellie tells him, a murmur. "Now is what matters." 

"Dr. Grant?" Lex calls, her voice sleep soft, and Alan catches her hand as it reaches for him. 

"Right here, Lex," he says. She smiles, faint. 

"Thanks for keeping your promise," she says, all a little slurred together. The sudden, swift memory of her panicked eyes in the rain by the culvert comes and goes in a blink, and he smiles, a quiet little thing full of the softer-than-pride feeling he's finally found the name of. 

**Author's Note:**

> dialogue from part one inspired by a copy of an earlier draft of the film script


End file.
